14ymedio, Havana, 16 February 2022 — Art curator Anamely Ramos was unable to return to the Island as planned after spending more than a year away from the Island studying for a doctorate in Mexico. The activist and member of the San Isidro Movement was unable to board her American Airlines flight because Cuba refused her entry.
Hours before boarding her flight from Miami, Ramos recorded a video in which she said that she fears what might happen to her upon her arrival in the country and asked international organizations and the press “to cover the event.”
“I left Cuba in January 2021, I went to study for a doctorate in anthropology at the Ibero-American University of Mexico (Ibero), I left of my own free will,” she says in a video to which this newspaper had access.
Ramos believes that the Cuban authorities are carrying out a strategy that consists of arresting those they consider a threat, violating all their rights, or forcing them into exile; in addition to preventing those who are already outside from returning. Because of this, she always thought that it would be very difficult for her to return to the Island.
However, the activist had warned the Cuban government that there was currently no place to which they could expel her since her Mexican study visa has expired and her tourist visa for the US is temporary and for a single entry. “I mean, they can’t legally take me anywhere, I want to make that clear for whatever happens in the future.” The activist has stated that she plans to stay at the airport until a solution is reached.
Ramos had asked the international human rights organizations not to believe the narrative that the Cuban Government could unfold against her and argues that she has not only worked for many years in the country, been a university professor and belonged to the academy, but also plans to contribute to the Cuban society of the future.
The curator hoped, once she arrived in Cuba, to be able to renew her passport, request the documentation she needed and leave the island whenever she wanted, for example, to see her son who lives abroad.
“I hope to be able to lead a normal life, with mobility within my country, I hope not to be imprisoned in my house, I hope not to have constant surveillance and I also hope to accompany the people who are in a situation of vulnerability today, many of whom are my friends, they are my family like Maykel Castillo and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who are sick, who are in prison,” she had explained. “I know who I am and that I am also going to Cuba to accompany those people. Power knows it and that is why I am afraid,” she said.
Ramos advanced that she does not plan to abandon any of her activities to be safe and claimed her right to return for a “strictly citizen” issue.
“I also ask for accompaniment so that any violation of any of these rights is condemned by the international organizations that must ensure the defense of human rights, by the press and by the democratic governments of the world,” the activist concluded.
Ramos had communicated her decision to return through social networks, in which she claimed to feel happy. “I know the country I’m going back to but still I know I’m going to freedom,” she wrote.
Ramos explained that one of her last glances before leaving for the Island had been to the sea. “What the sea unites, man should not separate. There are too many sad stories associated with that sea, it must be filled with happy things.”
The curator, who had a few words for her son, said that it was above all for him that she must return and that despite the fact that the regime has power, it should feel daily shame for how it has it. “They feel safe, but that security is made of cardboard. They have generated horror and that horror will reach them. Our power brings together and theirs expels. Let’s concentrate on bringing together,” she added shortly before learning that she could not return to Cuba.
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